Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11.77

c11.77

In contrast to their abundance throughout most of the ancient Bronze Age cultures of Persia and Mesopotamia, the virtual absence of stamp-seals in Western India is very marked — except, that is, in the Harappā Culture, with its very distinctive series of square seals, so well known. In the Amri-Nal Culture there is only one seal certainly recorded, and that is from the Nal cemetery. Here was found a curious seal of irregular shape engraved with a vulture, outlined and cross-hatched in the technique of the bird drawings on the pottery, with its foot on a snake. The material of the seal is steatite, the surface artificially bleached white in a manner very common in the Harappā Culture. There was also a copper stamp seal found during the Nal excavations, but there is nothing to associate it directly with either the earlier settlement or the later cemetery on the site, though, as we shall see in Chapter VI, it is likely to be relatively late in date.